Traditionally, the medical records of a patient are paper-based medical records, in which each medical service provider (that provides medical services to the patient) maintains a separate medical record for that patient.
Often, patients who are within certain age brackets or have certain conditions are uninformed of information that may be beneficial to their particular situation. Examples of these situations include the timing of prostate exams for men and mammograms for women.
Unfortunately, with paper-based medical records, the medical service provider would need to manually review the medical records of each of their patients to determine which groups of patients should receive medical information, come in for certain tests, or learn about certain diseases and warning signs, for example.
Currently, paper-based medical records are slowly being converted into electronic, centrally-located databases that are accessible by various medical service providers.